


The Third Time

by Josselin



Series: Blood [4]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bloodplay, Laurent is a vampire, M/M, Oral Sex, Threesome - M/M/M, Under-negotiated Kink, vampire!Laurent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:10:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: The third time Laurent bit Nikandros.





	The Third Time

**Author's Note:**

> First, a huge thank you to Mist for betaing this for me!
> 
> Second, I would like to note that I have fulfilled part 1/2 of an agreement with [Kittendiamore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittendiamore%22)! And I am early!

Damen had arranged the second time Laurent fed from Nikandros. Nikandros did not know how it came to be. Did Laurent speak to Damen when they were alone? Did he confess to feeling hunger? It was impossible to imagine. Was he imperious about it? _“Arrange for someone to feed me.”_ Or was it a quiet admission. A desperate word about his weakness. Nikandros could not guess, and neither Damen nor Laurent cared to enlighten him.

Nikandros could guess, from the interlude between the first feeding and the second, how long Laurent could go in between eating. The last time Laurent might have fed on Damen before everything that happened at the Kingsmeet would have been when they were together at the inn on the road. Then it was seven days after that to Laurent’s trial and the fighting against Kastor, and another five days until Laurent had confessed to Nikandros in Damen’s antechamber--”Did you mean?”--and Nikandros had permitted him the first taste.

After that feeding, it had been a fortnight before Damen had summoned Nikandros to his chambers one evening and beckoned Nikandros to his side. 

So for the first few days after the second feeding, Nikandros thought little of it. His wrist healed quickly, and by the end of the week he was left only with two sets of white marks on his skin. He wondered if had healed unusually quickly. He had certainly been cut before, but he had never paid much attention to how long a small cut would take to heal. He was not inclined to consult a physician.

Damen’s condition continued to improve. He was able to spend much of the day awake, and to walk around his chambers. Paschal permitted him to eat food besides broth, and poison tasters were employed to carefully test everything sent to the King. Paschal was continually forced to deny the King things he wished to do, and Nikandros was glad that at least someone was able to do it, even if it took a Veretian physician. Damen wished to eat spicy foods, and Paschal denied it. Damen wished to leave his rooms, and Paschal denied it. Damen wished to meet with the Kyroi, and Paschal denied it. Damen wanted to exercise in his rooms, and Paschal denied it. 

Laurent listened carefully to all of Paschal’s restrictions, and was even more rigorous in enforcing them upon Damen. 

“This is necessary so that you will make a full recovery and will once again be able to swing a sword,” Paschal told Damen at one point, and instead of belting the physician for his impertinence Damen just chuckled and tolerated yet another scented salve being applied to his middle.

By the time another fortnight had passed, it occured to Nikandros that Laurent ought to be feeling hungry again. 

He started to watch the Veretian Prince more closely, but his habits remained the same. He arose early in the morning. He tended to Veretian business with his men, then he visited Damen. Then he dealt with his correspondence, and then he checked in on Damen. He met with Periklis and dealt with the business of Ios in the late afternoon, conferred with any Kyroi or members of the Veretian Council who had shown up to raise questions, and then he retired for the evening with Damen. 

Nikandros could not observe any signs of hunger. Laurent ate normal food, as long as it had been approved by the poison tasters, and he drank only water, and again, only after it had been approved. Laurent did not change his schedule. He did not sleep in later in the morning or retire later in the evening. He was relentless in his expectations for other men, and clearly held himself to the same standards. 

Most of the time that Nikandros had to observe Damen and Laurent together, they were focused on the work of ruling. Laurent would summarize a situation succinctly, listen with a thoughtful tilt of his head to Damen’s perspective, and then one or the other of them would decide on a course of action. It was business-like and serious. The responsibilities of leadership clearly weighed heavily on each of them. 

Once or twice, Nikandros spied a hint of something more. Of some emotion that outweighed the political consequences of what they were trying to do. He caught sight of Laurent cupping Damen’s cheek gently once with a small smile, as Damen slumbered, and he thought to himself, “So it is not one-sided after all.” Or he came to meet with Damen early in the morning, and the two of them were seated on the bed with their breakfast on trays, giggling like children. 

On the first day that Damen was well enough to leave his chambers, he went for a walk through the gardens.

They made one pass through the inner garden, and then Damen said he was not tired and wished to walk further. Laurent had murmured, in Veretian, “Perhaps you wish to conserve your energy.”

Nikandros had sighed, inwardly, but Damen had looked over at Laurent with hope written obviously all over his face. Nikandros had thought that perhaps the physician might forestall whatever type of bedplay it was that the two of them were envisioning, but from the satisfied smile that graced Damen’s face the next morning, Nikandros presumed evidently not.

Damen didn’t seem to have reinjured himself, so Nikandros said nothing. If Damen did not invite him within, then Damen’s bedchamber habits were none of his concern. That was how it had always been between them. 

Two days later Nikandros broke this resolution of non-interference, because when he went to meet with Damen--who had moved from his bed to a padded chair in his bedchamber--Damen had two suspiciously placed scars on his neck. 

“You have not yet even recovered,” Nikandros scolded. “Yet he drinks from you?”

Damen looked sheepish. “He didn’t mean to.”

Nikandros frowned, disbelieving. Nothing about the way Laurent had bitten him seemed like it could have taken place by accident. “He bit you without thought?”

“It is instinctual when he--” Damen was blushing and averting his eyes “--finishes.”

Nikandros frowned again. “That sounds like a tale,” he said. “As when young men swear that if they are not able to finish they might perish.”

“He was very apologetic,” said Damen earnestly. “He bit on instinct and he did not drink much at all.”

Nikandros remained deeply skeptical. “You should abstain.” He meant from sex and from permitting Laurent to drink from him.

Damen’s facial expression at this suggestion conveyed the likelihood of such a course of action.

Nikandros pondered other alternatives. “Perhaps you could muzzle him.”

The following evening, Nikandros received another summons to Damen’s chamber at night. He could not stop the leap of his heart that said--as it did every time Damen asked for him--that perhaps Damen wished for his company in bed, rather than political advice about the kingdom. He told himself to cease being foolish, that it was more than he could have ever asked for Damen to simply be alive, and that he should be grateful for that much. He entered Damen’s chambers with an even expression.

He had apparently walked into something of a battlefield. Damen was seated on his bed--which was not unusual--and his expression could generously be called a pout. He was naked, which was his habit for sleeping, and he had a sheet covering his legs. Laurent was across the room, leaning against the desk, and his expression could generously be called a glare. Laurent was attired in the Akielon fashion, wearing a chiton that fell to mid-thigh.

“Old friend,” said Damen. He patted a space on the bed next to him. “Join me.”

_He doesn’t mean like that,_ Nikandros told himself, and he crossed the room slowly, looking from Damen to Laurent and then back to his King.

Once Nikandros was positioned next to Damen, sitting cautiously on the bed, Damen’s attention turned across the room. “Laurent,” Damen said entreatingly. 

Laurent was staring determinedly at the floor, now, and did not acknowledge Damen’s plea.

Damen turned to Nikandros. “Give me your knife,” he said. 

Nikandros had a small dagger in a sheath on his belt, and he drew the knife and handed it to Damen, hilt first. 

Damen took the dagger in his right hand--he was right handed, Nikandros well knew--and held his left hand out, palm up. 

Nikandros began to understand what was about to happen.

He hesitated for a moment, and then raised his right arm--the one that already bore four small scars--to Damen’s waiting palm. 

Damen spared him a grateful look, and then lowered the dagger he was holding to Nikandros’s wrist. With one sharp, quick movement, he drew a short line across it.

Nikandros hissed.

Blood welled up. It formed a line along where Damen had cut, and then pooled in droplets, spilling over over and rolling heavily along Nikandros’s arm. Some dripped onto Damen’s hand, still holding Nikandros’s arm in place.

“Do not be foolish,” Damen said, and Nikandros understood that now Damen was speaking to Laurent across the room.

The cut was not serious, Nikandros could tell. Damen understood the geography of a man’s body, and where a cut was deadly and where a cut was trivial, and he had not severed any of the prominent vessels in Nikandros’s wrist. The wound could be bandaged and would not trouble Nikandros further. Yet the blood was still flowing.

One moment, Laurent was across the room by the desk, refusing to look at the two of them. The next, he was upon them, kneeling on the bed and forming the three of them into a triangle. Nikandros’s eyes widened at the speed of his approach. Damen’s hand was still holding Nikandros’s arm, but his eyes were also focused solely on Laurent. 

Damen raised his right hand, holding the blade of the dagger out in Laurent’s direction. It was not a threatening gesture; it was an entreaty.

Laurent’s eyes caught on the bloody blade. He leaned in several inches closer to it. Damen kept the dagger extended. Laurent shifted closer, his face a handspan away from the metal. Damen was watching him as a hawk might regard prey in a meadow. Laurent’s eyes were focused, obsessively disregarding anything else in the room.

Laurent leaned in again, slowly, and closed the remaining inches between him and the dagger. His mouth dropped open and he licked slowly up the flat of the blade. 

Nikandros watched, fixated. Damen sucked in a breath next to him. Damen held the blade steady, and Laurent licked up the other side of it. Laurent held Damen’s eyes as he did so, and it was a thoroughly Veretian performance, treating a dagger as a slave might a piece of fruit in a private demonstration. 

Blood had dripped down the blade to Damen’s hand, and after Laurent had cleaned the metal, he lapped his tongue at Damen’s fingers grasping the hilt. 

“Laurent,” Damen said. The tone of his voice made it clear he was thinking of Laurent’s mouth on places that were not his hand. 

Laurent moved again, one of those silent and impossibly fast movements, and suddenly his mouth was at Nikandros’s wrist. He licked at the cut, and then when the blood swelled up again he licked it a second time, and then he moved his mouth over the side of Nikandros’s arm and the fingers of Damen’s other hand, where the cut had spilled over. 

He lapped at the cut for several minutes. It was like some tedious child’s game, where he licked up the blood, watched it flow again, and then repeated the whole action. Yet it had all three of them spellbound in silence.

The cut on Nikandros’s arm hurt sharply, but the touch of Laurent’s tongue was gentle. His breath was warm against Nikandros’s skin, like a lover’s caress. Laurent’s lips might have been making love to his wrist. Next to Nikandros, Damen’s breath was unsteady. 

After several minutes, Laurent looked up. He seemed to have realized the world existed again outside the flow of Nikandros’s blood, and he looked at Nikandros, and then at Damen. He licked at Nikandros’s cut a final time, before gazing to where some of the blood had spilled over onto the bedding and Damen’s thigh. Laurent leaned down, and licked up the blood from Damen’s thigh, red drops disappearing at the touch of his lips. 

Laurent pressed his mouth against Damen’s thigh for a moment. Nikandros worried, suddenly, that Laurent was biting Damen. But when Laurent raised his head, there was only a lover’s bite on Damen’s thigh, a circle of red skin where Laurent had licked Nikandros’s blood off of Damen’s skin, sucked Damen’s blood to the surface, and not punctured the skin with his teeth. 

Damen groaned. The sheets were bunched up around his knees, and were doing nothing to hide Damen’s obvious interest in the proceedings. 

Laurent sat back on his heels for a moment. His lips were red with blood; he licked them. He met Damen’s eyes, and something Nikandros could not decipher passed between the two of them. But it led Laurent to lean in again. Between one breath and another, Laurent opened his mouth, and then closed it again around Damen’s cock. 

Damen dropped the dagger on the other side of the bed and clenched his fist in the bedsheets. His other hand gripped tighter on Nikandros’s wrist. 

Nikandros’s mouth was slightly open. He watched. Nikandros liked Damen’s body. He liked the size of it and the strength of it and the spirit that it housed. He liked seeing Damen running or fighting on the field or laughing and speaking to his horse. He enjoyed seeing Damen take his pleasure, even when Nikandros was not the one delivering it. Damen had sometimes let Nikandros observe as he dallied with a slave, or the two of them might have lounged with one or two slaves together, and Nikandros enjoyed watching Damen in those encounters, and he was fairly certain that Damen knew it. 

Nikandros was uncertain about Laurent. The Veretian Prince was grudgingly earning his respect-- _You mean that he improves with time?_ \--but he still had something of a sense of fear and awe about Laurent, that made him slightly frightful to see Damen straining with his cock in this man’s mouth. 

Yet Nikandros found himself responding to Damen’s evident enjoyment. Damen had been roused before the touch of Laurent’s mouth, but he was pleased by Laurent’s ministrations. He expressed himself with the noises that he made and with soft repetitions of Laurent’s name. He didn’t reach for Laurent, as was usually Damen’s wont, but he spoke to him, saying things like “That feels so good,” and “Oh, Laurent,” and “Yes, again,” and something in Veretian that Nikandros did not entirely catch but that he suspected was dirty enough to make him blush. 

Damen spilled into Laurent’s mouth with a groan, and Laurent raised his head. For a moment, Nikandros had a view of his lips, a mix of blood red and white with Damen’s seed, and then Laurent licked his lips again and wiped at his face with the back of his hand, and he was composed yet again. 

Damen’s breathing was evening, next to Nikandros. Laurent’s eyes were drawn to Nikandros’s arm, which was still bleeding slowly, and Laurent leaned closer. When there were no objections, he licked at the blood again. Nikandros hissed at the sensation. Laurent drew back, and licked at his lips once more, sitting again on his heels. Nikandros was reminded of a cat that had been served a bowl of cream and was still waiting for a treat.

Damen seemed to realize that Nikandros had become aroused, watching Damen himself take his pleasure.

Damen felt at Nikandros’s chiton with the hand that had dropped the dagger. He moved the linen cloth and found Nikandros’s arousal and gripped it, stroking his friend slowly. Nikandros felt frozen in place, held by Damen’s hands on his wrist and his cock. 

“Old friend,” said Damen. The words were a question, somehow, and one that Nikandros had no idea how to answer.

Damen released his cock, and Nikandros let out a breath of air. He had some fleeting thought of taking his leave. Damen had not let go of his wrist, however. Damen moved it, and then tilted it, so that the blood dripping slowly from the cut dripped off of Nikandros’s arm not onto Damen’s hand, but onto the bedding, Nikandros’s disarrayed chiton, and then finally, onto Nikandros’s cock. A drop landed on the head and rolled down the side.

Laurent’s eyes followed the path of the blood. Laurent swayed closer to two of them, as though he were hypnotized by the blood and it drew him closer. 

Nikandros stopped breathing. Damen’s hold on his wrist was still strong. Nikandros felt especially attuned to the pulse of blood in his wrist, and the sharp pain of the cut Damen had made in his wrist. If he had received a similarly minor cut on the battlefield, he would not have spared it another thought, and yet this cut occupied much of his mind. Another drop of blood fell, landing close to the first.

Laurent’s gaze rose, and he looked Nikandros in the eye. Nikandros felt as though his own eyes were very wide. He said nothing. Laurent’s gaze traveled to Damen’s face. Something passed between the two of them again.

Laurent’s eyes returned to the trail of blood on Nikandros’s cock, and then Laurent leaned down further.

Nikandros thought about what was happening. Damen’s intention was clear. Laurent’s movement seemed clear, unless he was leaning in to bite Nikandros in a more intimate area. Nikandros generally reserved his affections for men or women with whom he was well acquainted. Damen enjoyed sex as just another way of getting to know someone he had met, but Nikandros preferred it with someone who’s respect and affection he had already earned. 

In some ways, he felt that he did not know Laurent well enough to wish to be intimate with him. And yet, more than a dozen men had sucked Nikandros’s cock. He had only permitted one man to drink his blood. Perhaps he was already more intimate with Laurent than he had acknowledged. Yet was he really going to let this creature touch him in that way?

The time to state an objection passed. Nikandros felt Laurent’s warm mouth around his cock. There was nothing objectively different about Laurent’s mouth on his cock versus Laurent’s mouth on his wrist, and yet the coil of Laurent’s tongue around the tip of his cock felt startlingly new. Laurent’s mouth seemed warmer on his cock than on his wrist, a wet haven for his cock to fit. 

Laurent sometimes seemed distant. He seemed otherworldly, aloof. When he was perfectly coiffed and coolly directing a man like Makedon, it was hard to also think of Laurent as a young man who was uncertain, and in love, and enjoyed pleasures of the flesh in bed. He seemed cold and hard.

Now, Nikandros could feel the warmth and talent of his mouth. Laurent chased the drops of blood on Nikandros’s cock, and then he sucked firmly and satisfactorily on the head, played for a bit, letting it press against the inside of his cheek and make a bulge against the side of his face. Damen cupped his face gently as he did this, and Nikandros groaned as much at the indirect caress of his friend’s hand as he did at the warmth of the mouth sucking him. 

Nikandros had not totally overcome his fear that Laurent might bite him. He looked down, watching the blond head in his lap, half aroused and half afraid. Laurent’s mouth was talented, and Damen’s hand was right there. Nikandros felt enveloped by his friend’s scent and embrace. He remembered Damen telling him how Laurent bit down instinctively when he reached orgasm, and he hoped that Laurent was not like one of those pets who had trained themselves to come when their master achieved release. He wondered what other things were instinctive for--whatever type of creature it was that Laurent was. Did they crave seed as much as they craved blood? Was it equally good at sating the hunger? He imagined that Laurent would drink from any wrist that was offered to him. Would he suck any cock that was put in front of him as well?

Laurent knew how to please a man, and demonstrated it, bringing Nikandros to pleasure efficiently, and when he had finished, swallowing neatly. He raised his head a second time, and Nikandros almost expected to see his lips bloodied again, but they were only pink from exertion. 

Laurent drew back. His eyes were bright and restless. He seemed uncertain about what came next. The sense of otherworldliness that sometimes hovered about him had subsided, and he seemed just a young man.

“Come here,” said Damen, and drew Laurent in toward himself, settling Laurent on top of one of his thighs and bringing their mouths together. 

Damen let go of Nikandros’s wrist at long last, and Nikandros applied pressure on the wound himself. Both of Damen’s hands landed on Laurent’s hips. Damen kissed Laurent again. Lover’s words passed between them. “Do you wish--” said Damen quietly. “For me to--”

Laurent kissed him, shook his head, and kissed again. “Not tonight,” he said.

There was a goblet of water on the side table next to the King’s bed, and Nikandros drank from it. He set the goblet back on the table. He felt confused and disoriented, but his gestures were simple and neat.

“I am going to go,” he said.

Damen reached a hand out toward him, and pulled Nikandros in closer to him. Damen leaned in, and he kissed Nikandros himself. Nikandros met the pressure of Damen’s lips for a long moment, and then drew back.

“Are you certain, old friend?” said Damen. Laurent was not looking at either of them. Nikandros’s wrist was still bleeding. 

Nikandros nodded. He stood up. He was three steps toward the door when Laurent’s voice stopped him. “You forgot your dagger.”

Nikandros turned back toward the bed. 

Laurent reached across Damen to pick up the discarded weapon, and then reached back to offer it to Nikandros, hilt first. 

Nikandros walked back, accepted it, and sheathed it again at his belt. He turned again toward the door, and as he left, his wrist trailed a drop of blood on the marble floor behind him.


End file.
